Don't Ever Use The `N' Word - It Hurts All Black People

Jake in Lake

It appears that the dust is settling in Wildwood. The racially charged scrimmage is over. If you're keeping score, the only winner in the Coach Gary Hughes mess was the ``N'' word.

Once again, it demonstrated the power it has over people. It doesn't matter how it was said, the personal history of who says it is irrelevent, all old friendships are off, circumstances are beside the point and the sticks-and-stones rule doesn't apply.

``The word'' is a fighting word. But only when uttered by whites.

Quite a few of the people I run into on the porch of the Grand Island Post Office, where such matters are discussed in these parts, don't understand this.

One man told me that he can't figure out why the black kids got so upset when the white coach said the word because ``they say it all the time.''

By ``they,'' he didn't mean the kids on the football team, he meant black people in general - specifically a Richard Pryor album he's heard and several HBO comedy specials featuring comedians such as Chris Rock and Eddie Murphy.

The man was irritated. He asked me, ``How can one group of people say a word and laugh about it and then get all hot and bothered if someone outside their group says it?''

I got the distinct feeling that this fellow didn't ask me because he wanted an answer. He already had his answer. He asked me because he knows I'm Southern and he assumed I would agree with him.

People do that to me all the time. Because of my accent, they assume things not always in evidence - like an antagonistic attitude toward the black community. It can be bothersome, but it's a legacy of the '50s and '60s that a lot of us have to live with.

To be perfectly honest, it's a fairly reasonable assumption. As a native East Tennessean, I generally hunker down in my chair when the topic of race relations is on the table. Strawberry Plains didn't have a good track record for tolerance.

Growing up I heard ``the word'' about 700 times a day. It was just about the only word ever used in reference to black people. This was not an evil thing - we just didn't know any better. The only truly evil word in our vocabularies was ``integration.''

We learned to act better - if not to think any more clearly - the hard way. Our early encounters with the concept of a rainbow society were not pretty things to behold. There was a lot of pride and very little dignity involved in the proceedings.

One incident says all I need to know about the awful power of ``the word.''

As a young teen, 13 or so, the only way I had to get into Knoxville to shoot pool was via one of the world's most amazing bus lines. The ``system'' had one vehicle, a World War II surplus conveyance of no particular color with wobbly wheels, crosseyed headlights and about 37 forward gears, all but two of which were irrelevant: Low and one that the driver kept looking for.

The bus was always either picking up speed or slowing down, was incapable of operating exclusively on any particular side of the yellow line, could only approximate where it might come to a stop, and smoked like a burning rag. The exhaust fed directly into the main cabin but that was okay because most of the windows wouldn't shut. The carbon monoxide kept your mind off the chill in January.

Nobody who had a choice would've ever set foot on such a thing. I rode it regularly. I had no choice.

Neither did the ladies from Hightop. This was a group of black women who worked as maids, housekeepers and nannies over in the then-ritzy Holston Hills community.

I think my geography is correct. The bus covered so much territory in such an unpredictable manner that they might've been from North Carolina or Cleveland. But Hightop was as ``predominantly black'' in those days as the porch of our post office is ``predominantly white'' today, so it's a good assumption.

Wherever they were from, the ladies were one of the world's purest hoots. You've never seen the like of the laughing and carrying on about everything. Or of the eating. They carried their own food and used to share it with me because I was too skinny and with the bus driver because they liked to watch him eat. It was quite a sight. Him and that transmission didn't have a half set of workable teeth between them, but they both got the job done. We'd go bouncing and grinding down alternating sides of the road eating cornbread and onions and having a high old time.

The women would get to laughing and talking about the men in their lives and ``the word'' would come up about once every five seconds or so. Nobody was very self-conscious about it. It was a happy, if wobbly and occasionally chilly, little band.

Then one day while we were attempting to stop at an intersection near the Holston Hills Country Club, everything changed. Three well-dressed kids, all about my age, came charging across a field throwing hickory nuts at the bus.